A variation of standard English that is distinct in vocabulary grammar or pronunciation refers to

This article is about dialects of spoken and written languages. For other uses, see Dialect (disambiguation).

Índice

• Dialect or language
• Linguistic distance
• Mutual intelligibility
• Sociolinguistic definitions
• Political factors
• Terminology
• The Balkans
• North Africa
• Greater China

The term dialect (from Latin dialectus, dialectos, from the Ancient Greek word διάλεκτος, diálektos 'discourse', from διά, diá 'through' and λέγω, légō 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:

• One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers.[1] Under this definition, the dialects or varieties of a particular language are closely related and, despite their differences, are most often largely mutually intelligible, especially if close to one another on the dialect continuum. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity.[2] A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect, a dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed an ethnolect, and a geographical/regional dialect may be termed a regiolect[3] (alternative terms include 'regionalect',[4] 'geolect',[5] and 'topolect'[6]). According to this definition, any variety of a given language can be classified as a "dialect", including any standardized varieties. In this case, the distinction between the "standard language" (i.e. the "standard" dialect of a particular language) and the "nonstandard" (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence.[7][8][9] In a similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives.[10] The term "dialect" is however sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions.[11][12][13][14]
• The other usage of the term "dialect", specific to colloquial settings in a few countries like Italy[15] (see dialetto[16]), France (see patois) and the Philippines,[17][18] carries a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of a non-national language to the country's single official language. In this case, these "dialects" are not actual dialects in the same sense as in the first usage, as they do not derive from the politically dominant language and are therefore not one of its varieties, but they evolved in a separate and parallel way and may thus better fit various parties’ criteria for a separate language. These "dialects" may be historically cognate with and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may even, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter. However, in this sense, unlike in the first usage, these “dialects” may be better defined as separate languages from the standard or national language and the standard or national language would not itself be considered a "dialect", as it is the dominant language in a particular state, be it in terms of linguistic prestige, social or political (e.g. official) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. The term "dialect" used this way implies a political connotation, being mostly used to refer to low-prestige languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from the national language), languages lacking institutional support, or those perceived as "unsuitable for writing".[19] The designation "dialect" is also used popularly to refer to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas,[20][21] where the term "vernacular language" would be preferred by linguists.[22]

Features that distinguish dialects from each other can be found in lexicon (vocabulary) and grammar, as well as in pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). Where the salient distinctions are only or mostly to be observed in pronunciation, the more specific term accent may be used instead of dialect. Differences that are largely concentrated in lexicon may be creoles in their own right. When lexical differences are mostly concentrated in the specialized vocabulary of a profession or other organization, they are jargons; differences in vocabulary that are deliberately cultivated to exclude outsiders or to serve as shibboleths are known as cryptolects (or "cant") and include slangs and argots. The particular speech patterns used by an individual are referred to as that person's idiolect.

To classify subsets of language as dialects, linguists take into account linguistic distance. The dialects of a language with a writing system will operate at different degrees of distance from the standardized written form. Some dialects of a language are not mutually intelligible in spoken form, leading to debate as to whether they are regiolects or separate languages.

A standard dialect also known as a "standardized language" is supported by institutions. Such institutional support may include any or all of the following: government recognition or designation; formal presentation in schooling as the "correct" form of a language; informal monitoring of everyday usage; published grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks that set forth a normative spoken and written form; and an extensive formal literature (be it prose, poetry, non-fiction, etc.) that uses it. An example of a standardized language is the French language which is supported by the Académie Française institution.

A nonstandard dialect has a complete grammar and vocabulary, but is usually not the beneficiary of institutional support.

The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity.[2] A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect. A dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed an ethnolect.

A geographical/regional dialect may be termed a regiolect[3] (alternative terms include 'regionalect',[4] 'geolect',[5] and 'topolect'[6]). According to this definition, any variety of a given language can be classified as "a dialect", including any standardized varieties. In this case, the distinction between the "standard language" (i.e. the "standard" dialect of a particular language) and the "nonstandard" (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence.[7][8][9] In a similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives.[10] The term "dialect" is however sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions.[23][12][24][25]

Dialect or language

See also: Abstand and ausbau languages and A language is a dialect with an army and navy

There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of the same language.[26] A number of rough measures exist, sometimes leading to contradictory results. The distinction (dichotomy) between dialect and language is therefore subjective (arbitrary) and depends upon the user's preferred frame of reference.[27] For example, there has been discussion about whether or not the Limón Creole English should be considered "a kind" of English or a different language. This creole is spoken in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica (Central America) by descendants of Jamaican people. The position that Costa Rican linguists support depends upon which university they represent. Another example is Scanian, which even, for a time, had its own ISO code.[28][29][30][31]

Linguistic distance

Main article: Linguistic distance

An important criterion for categorizing varieties of language is linguistic distance, for a variety to be considered a dialect, the linguistic distance between the two varieties must be low. Linguistic distance between spoken or written forms of language increases as the differences between the forms are characterized.[32] For example, two languages with completely different syntactical structures would have a high linguistic distance, while a language with very few differences from another may be considered a dialect or a sibling of that language. Linguistic distance may be used to determine language families and language siblings. For example, languages with little linguistic distance, like Dutch and German, are considered siblings. Dutch and German are siblings in the West-Germanic language group. Some language siblings are closer to each other in terms of linguistic distance than to other linguistic siblings. French and Spanish, siblings in the Romance Branch of the Indo-European group, are closer to each other than they are to any of the languages of the West-Germanic group.[32] When languages are close in terms of linguistic distance, they resemble one another, hence why dialects are not considered linguistically distant to their parent language.

Mutual intelligibility

One criterion, which is often considered to be purely linguistic, is that of mutual intelligibility: two varieties are said to be dialects of the same language if being a speaker of one variety confers sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other; otherwise, they are said to be different languages.[33] However, this definition has often been criticized, especially in the case of a dialect continuum (or dialect chain), which contains a sequence of varieties, each mutually intelligible with the next, but where widely separated varieties may not be mutually intelligible.[33] Others have argued that the mutual intelligibility criterion suffers from a series of problems, citing the fact that mutual intelligibility occurs in varying degrees, and the potential difficulty in distinguishing between intelligibility and prior familiarity with the other variety. However, recent research suggests that these objections do not stand up to scrutiny, and that there is some empirical evidence in favor of using some form of the intelligibility criterion to distinguish between languages and dialects,[34] though mutuality may not be as relevant as initially thought. The requirement for mutuality is abandoned by the Language Survey Reference Guide of SIL International, publishers of the Ethnologue and the registration authority for the ISO 639-3 standard for language codes. They define a dialect cluster as a central variety together with all those varieties whose speakers understand the central variety at a specified threshold level or higher. If the threshold level is high, usually between 70% and 85%, the cluster is designated as a language.[35]

Sociolinguistic definitions

Another occasionally used criterion for discriminating dialects from languages is the sociolinguistic notion of linguistic authority. According to this definition, two varieties are considered dialects of the same language if (under at least some circumstances) they would defer to the same authority regarding some questions about their language. For instance, to learn the name of a new invention, or an obscure foreign species of plant, speakers of Westphalian and East Franconian German might each consult a German dictionary or ask a German-speaking expert in the subject. Thus these varieties are said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, Standard German, which is said to be autonomous.[36]

In contrast, speakers in the Netherlands of Low Saxon varieties similar to Westphalian would instead consult a dictionary of Standard Dutch. Similarly, although Yiddish is classified by linguists as a language in the Middle High German group of languages and has some degree of mutual intelligibility with German, a Yiddish speaker would consult a Yiddish dictionary rather than a German dictionary in such a case.

Within this framework, W. A. Stewart defined a language as an autonomous variety together with all the varieties that are heteronomous with respect to it, noting that an essentially equivalent definition had been stated by Charles A. Ferguson and John J. Gumperz in 1960.[37][38] A heteronomous variety may be considered a dialect of a language defined in this way.[37] In these terms, Danish and Norwegian, though mutually intelligible to a large degree, are considered separate languages.[39] In the framework of Heinz Kloss, these are described as languages by ausbau (development) rather than by abstand (separation).[40]

In other situations, a closely related group of varieties possess considerable (though incomplete) mutual intelligibility, but none dominates the others. To describe this situation, the editors of the Handbook of African Languages introduced the term dialect cluster as a classificatory unit at the same level as a language.[41] A similar situation, but with a greater degree of mutual unintelligibility, has been termed a language cluster.[42]

Political factors

In many societies, however, a particular dialect, often the sociolect of the elite class, comes to be identified as the "standard" or "proper" version of a language by those seeking to make a social distinction and is contrasted with other varieties. As a result of this, in some contexts, the term "dialect" refers specifically to varieties with low social status. In this secondary sense of "dialect", language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages:

• if they have no standard or codified form,
• if they are rarely or never used in writing (outside reported speech),
• if the speakers of the given language do not have a state of their own,
• if they lack prestige with respect to some other, often standardised, variety.

The status of "language" is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a historical and political development. Romansh came to be a written language, and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic alpine dialects and classical Latin. An opposite example is Chinese, whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often called dialects and not languages in China, despite their mutual unintelligibility.

National boundaries sometimes make the distinction between "language" and "dialect" an issue of political importance. A group speaking a separate "language" may be seen as having a greater claim to being a separate "people", and thus to be more deserving of its own independent state, while a group speaking a "dialect" may be seen as a sub-group, part of a bigger people, which must content itself with regional autonomy.[citation needed]

The Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich published the expression, A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot ("אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמײ און פֿלאָט": "A language is a dialect with an army and navy") in YIVO Bleter 25.1, 1945, p. 13. The significance of the political factors in any attempt at answering the question "what is a language?" is great enough to cast doubt on whether any strictly linguistic definition, without a socio-cultural approach, is possible. This is illustrated by the frequency with which the army-navy aphorism is cited.

Terminology

By the definition most commonly used by linguists, any linguistic variety can be considered a "dialect" of some language—"everybody speaks a dialect". According to that interpretation, the criteria above merely serve to distinguish whether two varieties are dialects of the same language or dialects of different languages.

The terms "language" and "dialect" are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although they are often perceived to be.[43] Thus there is nothing contradictory in the statement "the language of the Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German".

There are various terms that linguists may use to avoid taking a position on whether the speech of a community is an independent language in its own right or a dialect of another language. Perhaps the most common is "variety";[44] "lect" is another. A more general term is "languoid", which does not distinguish between dialects, languages, and groups of languages, whether genealogically related or not.[45]

The colloquial meaning of dialect can be understood by example, e.g. in Italy[15] (see dialetto[16]), France (see patois) and the Philippines,[17][18] carries a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of a non-national language to the country's single official language. In other words, these "dialects" are not actual dialects in the same sense as in the first usage, as they do not derive from the politically dominant language and are therefore not one of its varieties, but instead they evolved in a separate and parallel way and may thus better fit various parties’ criteria for a separate language.

Despite this, these "dialects" may often be historically cognate and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may even, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter. In this sense, unlike in the first usage, the national language would not itself be considered a "dialect", as it is the dominant language in a particular state, be it in terms of linguistic prestige, social or political (e.g. official) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. The term "dialect" used this way implies a political connotation, being mostly used to refer to low-prestige languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from the national language), languages lacking institutional support, or those perceived as "unsuitable for writing".[19] The designation "dialect" is also used popularly to refer to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas,[20][21] where the term "vernacular language" would be preferred by linguists.[46]

John Lyons writes that "Many linguists [...] subsume differences of accent under differences of dialect."[8] In general, accent refers to variations in pronunciation, while dialect also encompasses specific variations in grammar and vocabulary.[47]

See also: Mesoamerican languages § Language vs. dialect

Main article: Arabic

See also: Varieties of Arabic

There are three geographical zones in which Arabic is spoken (Jastrow 2002).[48] Zone I is categorized as the area in which Arabic was spoken before the rise of Islam. It is the Arabian Peninsula, excluding the areas where southern Arabian was spoken. Zone II is categorized as the areas to which Arabic speaking peoples moved as a result of the conquests of Islam. Included in Zone II are the Levant, Egypt, North Africa, Iraq, and some parts of Iran. The Egyptian, Sudanese, and Levantine dialects (including the Syrian dialect) are well documented, and widely spoken and studied. Zone III comprises the areas in which Arabic is spoken outside of the continuous Arabic Language area.

Spoken dialects of the Arabic language share the same writing system and share Modern Standard Arabic as their common prestige dialect used in writing. However, some[which?] are mutually unintelligible from each other. This leads to debate among scholars of the status of Arabic dialects as their own regionalects or possibly separate languages.[citation needed]

German

See also: German dialects

When talking about the German language, the term German dialects is only used for the traditional regional varieties. That allows them to be distinguished from the regional varieties of modern standard German. The German dialects show a wide spectrum of variation. Some of them are not mutually intelligible. German dialectology traditionally names the major dialect groups after Germanic tribes from which they were assumed to have descended.[49]

The extent to which the dialects are spoken varies according to a number of factors: In Northern Germany, dialects are less common than in the South. In cities, dialects are less common than in the countryside. In a public environment, dialects are less common than in a familiar environment.

The situation in Switzerland and Liechtenstein is different from the rest of the German-speaking countries. The Swiss German dialects are the default everyday language in virtually every situation, whereas standard German is only spoken in education, partially in media, and with foreigners not possessing knowledge of Swiss German. Most Swiss German speakers perceive standard German to be a foreign language.

The Low German and Low Franconian varieties spoken in Germany are often counted among the German dialects. This reflects the modern situation where they are roofed by standard German. This is different from the situation in the Middle Ages when Low German had strong tendencies towards an ausbau language.

The Frisian languages spoken in Germany and the Netherlands are excluded from the German dialects.

Italy

Main articles: Languages of Italy and Regional Italian

Italy is an often quoted example of a country where the second definition of the word "dialect" (dialetto[16]) is most prevalent. Italy is in fact home to a vast array of separate languages, most of which lack mutual intelligibility with one another and have their own local varieties; twelve of them (Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian) underwent Italianization to a varying degree (ranging from the currently endangered state displayed by Sardinian and southern Italian Greek to the vigorous promotion of Germanic Tyrolean), but have been officially recognized as minority languages (minoranze linguistiche storiche), in light of their distinctive historical development. Yet, most of the regional languages spoken across the peninsula are often colloquially referred to in non-linguistic circles as Italian dialetti, since most of them, including the prestigious Neapolitan, Sicilian and Venetian, have adopted vulgar Tuscan as their reference language since the Middle Ages. However, all these languages evolved from Vulgar Latin in parallel with Italian, long prior to the popular diffusion of the latter throughout what is now Italy.[50]

During the Risorgimento, Italian still existed mainly as a literary language, and only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak Italian.[51] Proponents of Italian nationalism, like the Lombard Alessandro Manzoni, stressed the importance of establishing a uniform national language in order to better create an Italian national identity.[52] With the unification of Italy in the 1860s, Italian became the official national language of the new Italian state, while the other ones came to be institutionally regarded as "dialects" subordinate to Italian, and negatively associated with a lack of education.

In the early 20th century, the conscription of Italian men from all throughout Italy during World War I is credited with having facilitated the diffusion of Italian among the less educated conscripted soldiers, as these men, who had been speaking various regional languages up until then, found themselves forced to communicate with each other in a common tongue while serving in the Italian military. With the popular spread of Italian out of the intellectual circles, because of the mass-media and the establishment of public education, Italians from all regions were increasingly exposed to Italian.[50] While dialect levelling has increased the number of Italian speakers and decreased the number of speakers of other languages native to Italy, Italians in different regions have developed variations of standard Italian specific to their region. These variations of standard Italian, known as "regional Italian", would thus more appropriately be called dialects in accordance with the first linguistic definition of the term, as they are in fact derived from Italian,[53][18][54] with some degree of influence from the local or regional native languages and accents.[50]

The most widely spoken languages of Italy, which are not to be confused with regional Italian, fall within a family of which even Italian is part, the Italo-Dalmatian group. This wide category includes:

• the complex of the Tuscan and Central Italian dialects, such as Romanesco in Rome, with the addition of some distantly Corsican-derived varieties (Gallurese and Sassarese) spoken in Northern Sardinia;
• the Neapolitan group (also known as "Intermediate Meridional Italian"), which encompasses not only Naples' and Campania's speech but also a variety of related neighboring varieties like the Irpinian dialect, Abruzzese and Southern Marchegiano, Molisan, Northern Calabrian or Cosentino, and the Bari dialect. The Cilentan dialect of Salerno, in Campania, is considered significantly influenced by the Neapolitan and the below-mentioned language groups;
• the Sicilian group (also known as "Extreme Meridional Italian"), including Salentino and centro-southern Calabrian.

Modern Italian is heavily based on the Florentine dialect of Tuscan.[50] The Tuscan-based language that would eventually become modern Italian had been used in poetry and literature since at least the 12th century, and it first spread outside the Tuscan linguistic borders through the works of the so-called tre corone ("three crowns"): Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio. Florentine thus gradually rose to prominence as the volgare of the literate and upper class in Italy, and it spread throughout the peninsula and Sicily as the lingua franca among the Italian educated class as well as Italian travelling merchants. The economic prowess and cultural and artistic importance of Tuscany in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance further encouraged the diffusion of the Florentine-Tuscan Italian throughout Italy and among the educated and powerful, though local and regional languages remained the main languages of the common people.

Aside from the Italo-Dalmatian languages, the second most widespread family in Italy is the Gallo-Italic group, spanning throughout much of Northern Italy's languages and dialects (such as Piedmontese, Emilian-Romagnol, Ligurian, Lombard, Venetian, Sicily's and Basilicata's Gallo-Italic in southern Italy, etc.).

Finally, other languages from a number of different families follow the last two major groups: the Gallo-Romance languages (French, Occitan and its Vivaro-Alpine dialect, Franco-Provençal); the Rhaeto-Romance languages (Friulian and Ladin); the Ibero-Romance languages (Sardinia's Algherese); the Germanic Cimbrian, Southern Bavarian, Walser German and the Mòcheno language; the Albanian Arbëresh language; the Hellenic Griko language and Calabrian Greek; the Serbo-Croatian Slavomolisano dialect; and the various Slovene languages, including the Gail Valley dialect and Istrian dialect. The language indigenous to Sardinia, while being Romance in nature, is considered to be a specific linguistic family of its own, separate from the other Neo-Latin groups; it is often subdivided into the Centro-Southern and Centro-Northern dialects.

Though mostly mutually unintelligible, the exact degree to which all the Italian languages are mutually unintelligible varies, often correlating with geographical distance or geographical barriers between the languages; some regional Italian languages that are closer in geographical proximity to each other or closer to each other on the dialect continuum are more or less mutually intelligible. For instance, a speaker of purely Eastern Lombard, a language in Northern Italy's Lombardy region that includes the Bergamasque dialect, would have severely limited mutual intelligibility with a purely Italian speaker and would be nearly completely unintelligible to a Sicilian-speaking individual. Due to Eastern Lombard's status as a Gallo-Italic language, an Eastern Lombard speaker may, in fact, have more mutual intelligibility with an Occitan, Catalan, or French speaker than with an Italian or Sicilian speaker. Meanwhile, a Sicilian-speaking person would have a greater degree of mutual intelligibility with a speaker of the more closely related Neapolitan language, but far less mutual intelligibility with a person speaking Sicilian Gallo-Italic, a language that developed in isolated Lombard emigrant communities on the same island as the Sicilian language.

Today, the majority of Italian nationals are able to speak Italian, though many Italians still speak their regional language regularly or as their primary day-to-day language, especially at home with family or when communicating with Italians from the same town or region.

The Balkans

The classification of speech varieties as dialects or languages and their relationship to other varieties of speech can be controversial and the verdicts inconsistent. Serbo-Croatian illustrates this point. Serbo-Croatian has two major formal variants (Serbian and Croatian). Both are based on the Shtokavian dialect and therefore mutually intelligible with differences found mostly in their respective local vocabularies and minor grammatical differences. Certain dialects of Serbia (Torlakian) and Croatia (Kajkavian and Chakavian), however, are not mutually intelligible even though they are usually subsumed under Serbo-Croatian. How these dialects should be classified in relation to Shtokavian remains a matter of dispute.

Macedonian, although largely mutually intelligible with Bulgarian and certain dialects of Serbo-Croatian (Torlakian), is considered by Bulgarian linguists to be a Bulgarian dialect, in contrast with the view in North Macedonia, which regards it as a language in its own right. Before the establishment of a literary standard of Macedonian in 1944, in most sources in and out of Bulgaria before the Second World War, the South Slavic dialect continuum covering the area of today's North Macedonia were referred to as Bulgarian dialects. Sociolinguists agree that the question of whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis.[55][56]

Lebanon

See also: Lebanese Arabic

In Lebanon, a part of the Christian population considers "Lebanese" to be in some sense a distinct language from Arabic and not merely a dialect thereof. During the civil war, Christians often used Lebanese Arabic officially, and sporadically used the Latin script to write Lebanese, thus further distinguishing it from Arabic. All Lebanese laws are written in the standard literary form of Arabic, though parliamentary debate may be conducted in Lebanese Arabic.

North Africa

See also: Maghrebi Arabic

In Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, the Darijas (spoken North African languages) are sometimes considered more different from other Arabic dialects. Officially, North African countries prefer to give preference to the Literary Arabic and conduct much of their political and religious life in it (adherence to Islam), and refrain from declaring each country's specific variety to be a separate language, because Literary Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam and the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Qur'an. Although, especially since the 1960s, the Darijas are occupying an increasing use and influence in the cultural life of these countries. Examples of cultural elements where Darijas' use became dominant include: theatre, film, music, television, advertisement, social media, folk-tale books and companies' names.

Ukraine

The Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. In the 19th century, the Tsarist Government of the Russian Empire claimed that Ukrainian (or Little Russian, per official name) was merely a dialect of Russian (or Polonized dialect) and not a language on its own (same concept as for Belarusian language). That concepted was enrooted soon after the partitions of Poland. According to these claims, the differences were few and caused by the conquest of western Ukraine by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, in reality the dialects in Ukraine were developing independently from the dialects in the modern Russia for several centuries, and as a result they differed substantially.

Following the Spring of Nations in Europe and efforts of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, across the so called "Southwestern Krai" of Russian Empire started to spread cultural societies of Hromada and their Sunday schools. Themselves "hromadas" acted in same manner as Orthodox fraternities of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth back in 15th century. Around that time in Ukraine becoming popular political movements Narodnichestvo (Narodniks) and Khlopomanstvo.

Moldova

There have been cases of a variety of speech being deliberately reclassified to serve political purposes. One example is Moldovan. In 1996, the Moldovan parliament, citing fears of "Romanian expansionism", rejected a proposal from President Mircea Snegur to change the name of the language to Romanian, and in 2003 a Moldovan–Romanian dictionary was published, purporting to show that the two countries speak different languages. Linguists of the Romanian Academy reacted by declaring that all the Moldovan words were also Romanian words; while in Moldova, the head of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, Ion Bărbuţă, described the dictionary as a politically motivated "absurdity".

Greater China

Main article: Varieties of Chinese § Classification

Unlike languages that use alphabets to indicate their pronunciation, Chinese characters have developed from logograms that do not always give hints to their pronunciation. Although the written characters have remained relatively consistent for the last two thousand years, the pronunciation and grammar in different regions have developed to an extent that the varieties of the spoken language are often mutually unintelligible. As a series of migration to the south throughout the history, the regional languages of the south, including Gan, Xiang, Wu, Min, Yue and Hakka often show traces of Old Chinese or Middle Chinese. From the Ming dynasty onward, Beijing has been the capital of China and the dialect spoken in Beijing has had the most prestige among other varieties. With the founding of the Republic of China, Standard Mandarin was designated as the official language, based on the spoken language of Beijing. Since then, other spoken varieties are regarded as fangyan (regional speech). Cantonese is still the most commonly-used language in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and among some overseas Chinese communities, whereas Hokkien has been accepted in Taiwan as an important local language alongside Mandarin.

Main article: Interlingua

Interlingua was developed so that the languages of Western civilization would act as its dialects.[57] Drawing from such concepts as the international scientific vocabulary and Standard Average European, researchers at the International Auxiliary Language Association extracted words and affixes to be part of Interlingua's vocabulary.[58] In theory, speakers of the Western languages would understand written or spoken Interlingua immediately, without prior study, since their own languages were its dialects.[57] Interlingua could be used to assist in the learning of other languages.[59] The vocabulary of Interlingua extends beyond the Western language families.[58]

• Varieties of Arabic
• Bengali dialects
• Catalan dialects
• Varieties of Chinese
• Cypriot Greek
• Cypriot Turkish
• Danish dialects
• Dutch dialects
• English dialects
• Finnish dialects
• Varieties of French
• Georgian dialects
• German dialects
• Malayalam languages
• Varieties of Malay
• Connacht Irish, Munster Irish, Ulster Irish
• Italian dialects
• Japanese dialects
• Korean dialects
• Norwegian dialects
• Nguni languages
• Dialects of Polish
• Portuguese dialects
• Romanian dialects
• Russian dialects
• Slavic microlanguages
• Slovenian dialects
• Spanish dialects
• Swedish dialects
• Sri Lankan Tamil dialects
• Yiddish dialects

• Accent perception
• Chronolect
• Colloquialism
• Creole language
• Dialect levelling
• Dialectology
• Dialectometry
• Ethnolect
• Eye dialect
• Idiolect
• Isogloss
• Koiné language
• Register (sociolinguistics)
• Literary language
• Nation language
• Regional language
• Sprachbund

1. ^ Oxford Living Dictionaries – English. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
2. ^ a b "Definition of DIALECT". Merriam-webster.com.
3. ^ a b Wolfram, Walt and Schilling, Natalie. 2016. American English: Dialects and Variation. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, p. 184.
4. ^ a b Daniel. W. Bruhn, Walls of the Tongue: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed (PDF), p. 8
5. ^ a b Christopher D. Land (21 February 2013), "Varieties of the Greek language", in Stanley E. Porter, Andrew Pitts (ed.), The Language of the New Testament: Context, History, and Development, p. 250, ISBN 978-9004234772
6. ^ a b "topolect". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2010.
7. ^ a b Chao, Yuen Ren (1968). Language and Symbolic Systems. CUP archive. p. 130. ISBN 9780521094573.
8. ^ a b c Lyons, John (1981). Language and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. p. 25. ISBN 9780521297752. language standard dialect.
9. ^ a b Johnson, David (27 May 2008). How Myths about Language Affect Education: What Every Teacher Should Know. p. 75. ISBN 978-0472032877.
10. ^ a b McWhorter, John (Jan 19, 2016). "What's a Language, Anyway?". The Atlantic. Retrieved 19 July 2016.
11. ^ Benedikt Perak, Robert Trask, Milica Mihaljević (2005). Temeljni lingvistički pojmovi (in Serbo-Croatian). p. 81.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
12. ^ a b Schilling-Estes, Natalies (2006). "Dialect variation". In Fasold, R.W.; Connor-Linton, J. (eds.). An Introduction to Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 311–341.
13. ^ Sławomir Gala (1998). Teoretyczne, badawcze i dydaktyczne założenia dialektologii (in Polish). Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe. p. 24. ISBN 9788387749040.
14. ^ Małgorzata Dąbrowska-Kardas (2012). Analiza dyrektywalna przepisów części ogólnej kodeksu karnego (in Polish). Wolters Kluwer. p. 32. ISBN 9788326446177.
15. ^ a b «The often used term "Italian dialects" may create the false impression that the dialects are varieties of the standard Italian language.» Martin Maiden, M. Mair Parry (1997), The Dialects of Italy, Psychology Press, p.2
16. ^ a b c «Parlata propria di un ambiente geografico e culturale ristretto (come la regione, la provincia, la città o anche il paese): contrapposta a un sistema linguistico affine per origine e sviluppo, ma che, per diverse ragioni (politiche, letterarie, geografiche, ecc.), si è imposto come lingua letteraria e ufficiale». Battaglia, Salvatore (1961). Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, UTET, Torino, V. IV, pp.321-322
17. ^ a b Peter G. Gowing, William Henry Scott (1971). Acculturation in the Philippines: Essays on Changing Societies. A Selection of Papers Presented at the Baguio Religious Acculturation Conferences from 1958 to 1968. New Day Publishers. p. 157.
18. ^ a b c Maiden, Martin; Parry, Mair (1997). The Dialects of Italy. Routledge. p. 2. ISBN 9781134834365.
19. ^ a b Defenders of the Indigenous Languages of the Archipelago (2007). Filipino is Not Our Language: Learn why it is Not and Find Out what it is. p. 26.
20. ^ a b Fodde Melis, Luisanna (2002). Race, Ethnicity and Dialects: Language Policy and Ethnic Minorities in the United States. FrancoAngeli. p. 35. ISBN 9788846439123.
21. ^ a b Crystal, David (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6 ed.). Blackwell Publishing. p. 142–144. ISBN 978-1-4051-5296-9.
22. ^ Haugen, Einar (1966). "Dialect, Language, Nation". American Anthropologist. American Anthropologist New Series, Vol. 68, No. 4. 68 (4): 927. doi:10.1525/aa.1966.68.4.02a00040. JSTOR 670407.
23. ^ Perak, Benedikt; Trask, Robert; Mihaljević, Milica (2005). Temeljni lingvistički pojmovi (in Serbo-Croatian). p. 81.
24. ^ Gala, Sławomir (1998). Teoretyczne, badawcze i dydaktyczne założenia dialektologii (in Polish). Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe. p. 24. ISBN 9788387749040.
25. ^ Dąbrowska-Kardas, Małgorzata (2012). Analiza dyrektywalna przepisów części ogólnej kodeksu karnego (in Polish). Wolters Kluwer. p. 32. ISBN 9788326446177.
26. ^ Cysouw, Michael; Good, Jeff. (2013). "Languoid, Doculect, and Glossonym: Formalizing the Notion 'Language'." Language Documentation and Conservation. 7. 331–359. hdl:10125/4606.
27. ^ "Tomasz Kamusella. 2016. The History of the Normative Opposition of 'Language versus Dialect:' From Its Graeco-Latin Origin to Central Europe's Ethnolinguistic Nation-States (pp 189-198). Colloquia Humanistica. Vol 5". Retrieved 8 March 2022.
28. ^ Urla, Jacqueline (1988). "Ethnic Protest and Social Planning: A Look at Basque Language Revival". Cultural Anthropology. 3 (4): 379–394. doi:10.1525/can.1988.3.4.02a00030. JSTOR 656484 – via JSTOR.
29. ^ Haugen, Einar (August 28, 1966). "Dialect, Language, Nation". American Anthropologist. 68 (4): 922–935. doi:10.1525/aa.1966.68.4.02a00040.
30. ^ Fishman, Joshua A. (1969). "National Languages and Languages of Wider Communication in the Developing Nations". Anthropological Linguistics. 11 (4): 111–135. JSTOR 30029217 – via JSTOR.
31. ^ Simon J. Ortiz (1981). "Towards a National Indian Literature: Cultural Authenticity in Nationalism" (PDF). MELUS. The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. 8 (2): 7–12. doi:10.2307/467143. JSTOR 467143. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
32. ^ a b Tang, Chaoju; van Heuven, Vincent J. (May 2009). "Mutual intelligibility of Chinese dialects experimentally tested". Lingua. 119 (5): 709–732. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2008.10.001. hdl:1887/14919. ISSN 0024-3841.
33. ^ a b Comrie, Bernard (2018). "Introduction". In Bernard Comrie (ed.). The World's Major Languages. Routledge. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-1-317-29049-0.
34. ^ Tamburelli, Marco (2021). "Taking taxonomy seriously in linguistics: Intelligibility as a criterion of demarcation between languages and dialects". Lingua. 256: 103068. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2021.103068. S2CID 233800051.
35. ^ Grimes, Joseph Evans (1995). Language Survey Reference Guide. SIL International. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-88312-609-7.
36. ^ a b Chambers & Trudgill (1998), p. 10.
37. ^ a b Stewart, William A. (1968). "A sociolinguistic typology for describing national multilingualism". In Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). Readings in the Sociology of Language. De Gruyter. pp. 531–545. doi:10.1515/9783110805376.531. ISBN 978-3-11-080537-6. p. 535.
38. ^ Ferguson, Charles A.; Gumperz, John J. (1960). "Introduction". In Ferguson, Charles A.; Gumperz, John J. (eds.). Linguistic Diversity in South Asia: Studies in Regional, Social, and Functional Variation. Indiana University, Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics. pp. 1–18. p. 5.
39. ^ Chambers & Trudgill (1998), p. 11.
40. ^ Kloss, Heinz (1967). "'Abstand languages' and 'ausbau languages'". Anthropological Linguistics. 9 (7): 29–41. JSTOR 30029461.
41. ^ Handbook Sub-committee Committee of the International African Institute. (1946). "A Handbook of African Languages". Africa. 16 (3): 156–159. doi:10.2307/1156320. JSTOR 1156320. S2CID 245909714.
42. ^ Hansford, Keir; Bendor-Samuel, John; Stanford, Ron (1976). "A provisional language map of Nigeria". Savanna. 5 (2): 115–124. p. 118.
43. ^ McWhorter, John (2016-01-19). "There's No Such Thing as a 'Language'". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2019-10-24.
44. ^ Finegan, Edward (2007). Language: Its Structure and Use (5th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Thomson Wadsworth. p. 348. ISBN 978-1-4130-3055-6.
45. ^ "Languoid" at Glottopedia.com
46. ^ Haugen, Einar (1966). "Dialect, Language, Nation". American Anthropologist. American Anthropologist New Series, Vol. 68, No. 4. 68 (4): 927. doi:10.1525/aa.1966.68.4.02a00040. JSTOR 670407.
47. ^ Lyons (1981), p. 268.
48. ^ Watson, Janet C.E. (2011-12-21), "50. Arabic Dialects (general article)", The Semitic Languages, De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 851–896, doi:10.1515/9783110251586.851, ISBN 978-3-11-025158-6, retrieved 2020-10-17
49. ^ Danvas, Kegesa (2016). "From dialect to variation space". Cutewriters. Cutewriters Inc. Retrieved July 29, 2016.
50. ^ a b c d Domenico Cerrato. "Che lingua parla un italiano?". Treccani.it.
51. ^ "Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition". Ethnologue.com. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
52. ^ An often quoted paradigm of Italian nationalism is the ode on the Piedmontese revolution of 1821 (Marzo 1821), wherein the Italian people are portrayed by Manzoni as "one by military prowess, by language, by religion, by history, by blood, and by sentiment".
53. ^ Loporcaro, Michele (2009). Profilo linguistico dei dialetti italiani (in Italian). Bari: Laterza.; Marcato, Carla (2007). Dialetto, dialetti e italiano (in Italian). Bologna: Il Mulino.; Posner, Rebecca (1996). The Romance languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
54. ^ Repetti, Lori (2000). Phonological Theory and the Dialects of Italy. John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 9027237190.
55. ^ Chambers, Jack; Trudgill, Peter (1998). Dialectology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 7. Similarly, Bulgarian politicians often argue that Macedonian is simply a dialect of Bulgarian – which is really a way of saying, of course, that they feel Macedonia ought to be part of Bulgaria. From a purely linguistic point of view, however, such arguments are not resolvable, since dialect continua admit of more-or-less but not either-or judgements.
56. ^ Danforth, Loring M. (1997). The Macedonian conflict: ethnic nationalism in a transnational world. Princeton University Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0691043562. Sociolinguists agree that in such situations the decision as to whether a particular variety of speech constitutes a language or a dialect is always based on political, rather than linguistic criteria (Trudgill 1974:15). A language, in other words, can be defined "as a dialect with an army and a navy" (Nash 1989:6).
57. ^ a b Morris, Alice Vanderbilt, General report Archived 2006-08-14 at the Wayback Machine. New York: International Auxiliary Language Association, 1945.
58. ^ a b Gode, Alexander, Interlingua-English Dictionary. New York: Storm Publishers, 1951.
59. ^ Gopsill, F. P., International languages: A matter for Interlingua. Sheffield: British Interlingua Society, 1990. "In one study, Swedish high school students learning Interlingua were able to translate passages from Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian that students of those languages found too difficult to understand."

Look up dialect in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Sounds Familiar? – Listen to regional accents and dialects of the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
• International Dialects of English Archive Since 1997
• thedialectdictionary.com – Compilation of Dialects from around the globe
• A site for announcements and downloading the SEAL System
• "Dialect" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 155–156.

See also: Renaissance of the 12th century

The 12th century is the period from 1101 to 1200 in accordance with the Julian calendar. In the history of European culture, this period is considered part of the High Middle Ages and is sometimes called the Age of the Cistercians. The Golden Age of Islam experienced a significant development, particularly in Islamic Spain.

• 11th century
• 12th century
• 13th century

• 11th century
• 12th century
• 13th century

• 11th century
• 12th century
• 13th century

• 1100s
• 1110s
• 1120s
• 1130s
• 1140s

• 1150s
• 1160s
• 1170s
• 1180s
• 1190s

In Song dynasty China an invasion by Jurchens caused a political schism of north and south. The Khmer Empire of Cambodia flourished during this century, while the Fatimids of Egypt were overtaken by the Ayyubid dynasty. Following the expansions of the Ghaznavids and Ghurid Empire, the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent took place at the end of the century.

• 1101: In July, the Treaty of Alton is signed between Henry I of England and his older brother Robert, Duke of Normandy in which Robert agrees to recognize Henry as king of England in exchange for a yearly stipend and other concessions. The agreement temporarily ends a crisis in the succession of the Anglo-Norman kings.
• 1101–1103: David the Builder takes over Kakheti and Hereti, (now parts of Georgia).
• 1102: King Coloman unites Hungary and Croatia under the Hungarian Crown.
• 1102: Muslims conquer Señorio de Valencia
• 1103-1104: A church council is convened by King David the Builder in Urbnisi to reorganize the Georgian Orthodox Church.
• 1104: In the Battle of Ertsukhi, King David the Builder defeats an army of Seljuks.
• 1104: King Jayawarsa of Kadiri (on Java) ascends to the throne.[citation needed]
• 1106: Battle of Tinchebray
• 1107–1111: Sigurd I of Norway becomes the first Norwegian king to embark on a crusade to the Holy Land. He fights in Lisbon and on various Mediterranean isles, and helps the King of Jerusalem to take Sidon from the Muslims.
• 1108: By the Treaty of Devol, signed in September, Bohemond I of Antioch has to submit to the Byzantine Empire, becoming the vassal of Alexius I.
• 1109: On June 10, Bertrand of Toulouse captures the County of Tripoli (northern Lebanon/western Syria).
• 1109: In the Battle of Nakło, Boleslaus III Wrymouth defeats the Pomeranians and re-establishes Polish access to the sea.
• 1109: On August 24, in the Battle of Hundsfeld, Boleslaus III Wrymouth defeats Emperor Henry V of Germany and stops German expansion eastward.

• 1111: On April 14, during Henry V's first expedition to Rome, he is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1113: Paramavishnulok is crowned as King Suryavarman II in Cambodia. He expands the Khmer Empire and builds Angkor Wat during the first half of the century. He establishes diplomatic relations with China.
• 1115: The Georgian army occupies Rustavi in the war to free Georgia from the Muslims.
• 1115: In Java, King Kamesvara of Kadiri ascends to the throne. Janggala ceases to exist and comes under Kadiri domination, highly possible under royal marriage. During his reign Mpu Dharmaja writes Kakawin Smaradahana, a eulogy for the king which become the inspiration for the Panji cycle tales, which spread across Southeast Asia.[1]
• 1116: The Byzantine army defeats the Turks at Philomelion.
• 1116: Death of doña Jimena Díaz, governor of Valencia since 1099 to 1102.
• c. 1119: The Knights Templar are founded to protect Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem.

• 1120: On January 16, the Council of Nablus, a council of ecclesiastic and secular lords in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, establishes the first written laws for the kingdom.
• 1120: On November 25, William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I of England, drowns in the White Ship Disaster, leading to a succession crisis which will bring down the Norman monarchy of England.
• 1121: On August 12, in the Battle of Didgori, the greatest military victory in Georgian history, King David the Builder with 45,000 Georgians, 15,000 Kipchak auxiliaries, 500 Alan mercenaries and 100 French Crusaders defeats a much larger Seljuk-led Muslim coalition army.
• 1121: On December 25, St. Norbert and 29 companions make their solemn vows in Premontre, France, establishing the Premonstratensian Order.
• 1122: The Battle of Beroia (Modern-day Stara Zagora, Bulgaria) results in the disappearance of the Pechenegs Turkish tribe as an independent force.
• 1122: On September 23, the Concordat of Worms (Pactum Calixtinum) is drawn up between Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II bringing an end to the first phase of the power struggle between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.
• 1122: King David the Builder captures Tbilisi and declares it the capital city of Georgia, ending 400 years of Arab rule.
• 1123: The Jurchen dynasty of China forces Koryo (now Korea) to recognize their suzerainty.
• 1124: In April or May, David I is crowned King of the Scots.
• 1125: On June 11, in the Battle of Azaz, the Crusader states, led by King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, defeat the Seljuk Turks.
• 1125: In November, the Jurchens of the Jin dynasty declare war on the Song dynasty, beginning the Jin–Song wars.
• 1125: Lothair of Supplinburg, duke of Saxony, is elected Holy Roman Emperor instead of the nearest heir, Frederick of Swabia, beginning the great struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines.
• 1127: The Northern Song dynasty loses power over northern China to the Jin dynasty.
• 1128: On June 24, the Kingdom of Portugal gains independence from the Kingdom of León at the Battle of São Mamede; (recognised by León in 1143).

• 1130–1180: 50-year drought in the American Southwest.
• 1130–1138: Papal schism, Pope Innocent II vs. Antipope Anacletus II.
• 1130: On March 26, Sigurd I of Norway dies. A golden era of 95 years comes to an end for Norway as civil wars between the members of Harald Fairhair's family line rage for the remainder of the century.
• 1130: On Christmas Day, Roger II is crowned King of Sicily, the royal title being bestowed on him by Antipope Anacletus II.
• 1130: King Jayabaya of Kadiri ascends to the throne.[citation needed]
• 1132: The Southern Song dynasty establishes China's first permanent standing navy, although China had a long naval history prior. The main admiral's office is at the port of Dinghai.
• 1132–1183: the Chinese navy increases from a mere 3,000 to 52,000 marine soldiers stationed in 20 different squadrons. During this time, hundreds of treadmill-operated paddle wheel craft are assembled for the navy to fight the Jin dynasty in the north.
• 1135–1154: The Anarchy takes place, a period of civil war in England.
• 1136: Suger begins rebuilding the abbey church at St Denis north of Paris, which is regarded as the first major Gothic building.
• 1137: On July 22, the future King Louis VII of France marries Eleanor, the Duchess of Aquitaine.
• 1138: On October 11, the 1138 Aleppo earthquake devastates much of northern Syria.
• 1139: in April, the Second Lateran Council ends the papal schism.
• 1139: On July 5, in the Treaty of Mignano, Pope Innocent II confirms Roger II as King of Sicily, Duke of Apulia, and Prince of Capua and invests him with his titles.
• 1139: On July 26, the Portuguese defeat the Almoravids led by Ali ibn Yusuf in the Battle of Ourique; Prince Afonso Henriques is acclaimed King of Portugal by his soldiers.

• 1140–1150: Collapse of the Ancestral Puebloan culture at Chaco Canyon (modern-day New Mexico).
• 1141: The Treaty of Shaoxing ends the conflict between the Jin dynasty and Southern Song dynasty, legally establishing the boundaries of the two countries and forcing the Song dynasty to renounce all claims to its former territories north of the Huai River. The treaty reduces the Southern Song into a quasi-tributary state of the Jurchen Jin dynasty.
• 1143: Afonso Henriques is proclaimed King of Portugal by the cortes.
• 1143: The Treaty of Zamora recognizes Portuguese independence from the Kingdom of León. Portugal also recognizes the suzerainty of the pope.
• 1144: On December 24, Edessa falls to the Atabeg Zengi.
• 1145–1148: The Second Crusade is launched in response to the fall of the County of Edessa.
• 1147: On October 25, the four-month-long Siege of Lisbon successfully brings the city under definitive Portuguese control, expelling the Moorish overlords.
• 1147: A new Berber dynasty, the Almohads, led by Emir Abd al-Mu'min, takes North Africa from the Almoravides and soon invades the Iberian Peninsula. The Almohads began as a religious movement to rid Islam of impurities.
• 1147: The Wendish Crusade against the Polabian Slavs (or "Wends") in what is now northern and eastern Germany.

• 1150: Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona marries Petronilla, the Queen of Aragon.
• 1151: The Treaty of Tudilén is signed by Alfonso VII of León and Raymond Berengar IV, Count of Barcelona, recognising the Aragonese conquests south of the Júcar and the right to expand in and annex the Kingdom of Murcia.
• 1153: The Treaty of Wallingford, ends the civil war between Empress Matilda and her cousin King Stephen of England fought over the English crown. Stephen acknowledges Matilda's son Henry of Anjou as heir.
• 1153: The First Treaty of Constance is signed between Emperor Frederick I and Pope Eugene III, by the terms of which, the emperor is to prevent any action by Manuel I Comnenus to reestablish the Byzantine Empire on Italian soil and to assist the pope against his enemies in revolt in Rome.
• 1154: the Moroccan-born Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi publishes his Geography.
• 1154: On December 27, Henry II is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.
• 1155: Pope Adrian IV grants overlordship of Ireland to Henry II of England in the bull Laudabiliter.
• 1156: On June 18, the Treaty of Benevento is entered into by Pope Adrian IV and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. After years of turbulent relations, the popes finally settles down to a peace with the Hauteville kings. The kingship of William I is recognised over all Sicily, Apulia, Calabria, Campania, and Capua. The tribute to the pope of 600 schifati agreed upon by Roger II in 1139 at Mignano is affirmed and another 400 schifati is added for the new lands.
• 1158: The Treaty of Sahagún ends the war between Castile and León.

• 1161: the Song dynasty Chinese navy, employing gunpowder bombs launched from trebuchets, defeats the enormous Jin dynasty navy in the East China Sea in the Battle of Tangdao and on the Yangtze River in the Battle of Caishi.
• 1161: Kilij Arslan II, Sultan of Rum, makes peace with the Byzantine Empire, recognizing the emperor's primacy.

• 1161: In the siege of Ani, troops from the Kingdom of Georgia take control over the city, only to have it sold for the second time to the Shaddadids, a Kurdish dynasty.
• 1162: Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, is born as Temüjin in present-day Mongolia.
• 1163: The Norwegian Law of Succession takes effect.
• 1165–1182: Tensions and disputes between the Pagan Empire and the Kingdom of Polonnaruwa causes the Sinhalese under Parakramabahu the Great to raid Burma.
• 1168: King Valdemar I of Denmark conquers Arkona on the Island of Rügen, the strongest pagan fortress and temple in northern Europe.
• 1169: Political disputes within the Pandya Empire sparks the decade-long Pandyan Civil War.
• 1169: On May 1, the Norman invasion of Ireland begins. Richard fitzGilbert de Clare ('Strongbow') makes an alliance with the exiled Irish chief, Dermot MacMurrough, to help him recover his kingdom of Leinster.

• 1170: The Treaty of Sahagún is signed by Alfonso VIII of Castile and Alfonso II of Aragon. Based on the terms of the accord, Alfonso VIII agrees to provide Alfonso II three hostages, to be used as tribute payments owed by Ibn Mardanīš of Valencia and Murcia.
• 1170: On December 29, Thomas Becket is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral.
• 1171: Saladin deposes the last Fatimid Caliph Al-'Āḍid and establishes the Ayyubid dynasty.
• 1171: On November 11, Henry II of England lands in Ireland to assert his claim as Lord of Ireland.
• 1172: The Pandyan city of Madurai is sacked by the Sinhalese army due to an attempt to drive off the rival throne claimant, Kulasekara Pandyan.
• 1173: Sinhalese king Parakramabahu the Great gains a decisive victory by invading the Chola Empire as an ally of the Pandyas in the Pandyan Civil War.
• 1174: On July 12, William I of Scotland is captured by the English in the Battle of Alnwick. He accepts the feudal overlordship of the English crown and pays ceremonial allegiance at York.
• 1175: Hōnen Shōnin (Genkū) founds the Jōdo shū (Pure Land) sect of Buddhism.
• 1175: The Treaty of Windsor is signed by King Henry II of England and the High King of Ireland, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair.
• 1176: On May 29, Frederick Barbarossa's forces are defeated in the Battle of Legnano by the Lombard League which results in the emperor's acknowledgement of the pope's sovereignty over the Papal States and Alexander acknowledging the emperor's overlordship of the imperial Church.
• 1176: On September 17, The Battle of Myriokephalon (Myriocephalum; Turkish: Miryakefalon Savaşı) is fought between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Turks in Phrygia. It is a serious reversal for the Byzantine forces and will be the final, unsuccessful, effort by the Byzantines to recover the interior of Anatolia from the Seljuk Turks.
• 1177: The Treaty or Peace of Venice is signed by the Papacy and its allies, and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily also takes part in negotiations and the treaty thereby determines the political course of all Italy for the next several years.
• 1178: Chinese writer Zhou Qufei, a Guangzhou customs officer, writes of an island far west in the Indian Ocean (possibly Madagascar), from where people with skin "as black as lacquer" and with frizzy hair were captured and purchased as slaves by Arab merchants.
• 1179: The Treaty of Cazola (Cazorla) is signed by Alfonso II of Aragon and Alfonso VIII of Castile, dividing Andalusia into separate zones of conquest for the two kingdoms, so that the work of the Reconquista would not be stymied by internecine feuding.

• 1180: The Portuguese Navy defeats a Muslim fleet off the coast of Cape Espichel.
• 1180–1185: the Genpei War in Japan.
• 1181: Parakramabahu the Great conducts a large-scale raid on Burma, after a ship transporting a Sinhalese princess to the Khmer Empire is attacked by Burmese naval fleets.
• 1182: Religious reformations of Theravada Buddhism in Pagan Burma under the patronage of Narapatisithu are continued with the end of the Polonnaruwa-Pagan War.
• 1182: revolt of the people of Constantinople against the Latins, whom they massacre, proclaiming Andronicus I Comnenus co-emperor.
• 1183: On January 25, the final Peace of Constance between Frederick Barbarossa, the pope, and the Lombard towns is signed, confirming the Peace of Venice of 1177.
• 1183: On September 24, Andronicus I Comnenus has his nephew Alexius II Comnenus strangled.
• 1184: On March 24, Queen Tamar, King of Georgia, accedes to the throne as sole ruler after reigning with her father, George III, for six years.
• 1184: Diet of Pentecost organised by Emperor Frederick I in Mainz.
• 1185: The Uprising of Asen and Peter against the Byzantine Empire leads to the restoration of the Bulgarian Empire.
• 1185: Andronicus I Comnenus is deposed and, on September 12, executed as a result of the Norman massacre of the Greeks of Thessalonika.
• 1185: The cathedral school (Katedralskolan) in Lund, Sweden, is founded. The school is the oldest in northern Europe, and one of the oldest in all of Europe.
• 1185: Beginning in this year the Kamakura shogunate deprives the emperor of Japan of political power.

• 1186: On January 27, the future Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI marries Constance of Sicily, the heiress to the Sicilian throne.
• 1187: On July 4, in the Battle of Hattin, Saladin defeats the king of Jerusalem.
• 1187: In August, the Swedish royal and commercial center Sigtuna is attacked by raiders from Karelia, Couronia and/or Estonia.[2]
• 1188: The Riah were introduced into the Habt and south of Tetouan by the Almohad caliph, Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, and Jochem and Acem were introduced in Tamesna.[3]
• 1189: On September 3, Richard I is crowned King of England at Westminster.
• 1189: On November 11, William II of Sicily dies and is succeeded by his illegitimate cousin Tancred, Count of Lecce instead of Constance.
• 1189–1192: The Third Crusade is an attempt by European leaders to wrest the Holy Land from Saladin.

• 1190: On June 10, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa drowns in the River Salef, leaving the Crusader army under the command of the rivals Philip II of France and Richard I of England, which ultimately leads to the dissolution of the army.
• 1191: Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI attacked Kingdom of Sicily from May to August but fails and withdraws, with Empress Constance captured (released 1192).
• 1191: On September 7, Saladin is defeated by Richard I of England at the Battle of Arsuf.
• 1192: In April, Isabella I begins her reign as Christian Queen of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
• 1192: In the Battle of Jaffa, King Richard the Lionheart defeats Saladin.
• 1192: In June, the Treaty of Ramla is signed by Saladin and Richard Lionheart. Under the terms of the agreement, Jerusalem will remain under Muslim control. However, the city will be open to Christian pilgrims. The Latin Kingdom is reduced to a coastal strip that extends from Tyre to Jaffa.
• 1192: Minamoto no Yoritomo is appointed Sei-i Taishōgun, "barbarian-subduing great general", shōgun for short, the first military dictator to bear this title.
• 1193: Nalanda, the great Indian Buddhist educational centre, is destroyed.
• 1193: Sultan Shahābuddin Muhammad Ghori, establishes the first Muslim empire in India by defeating Prithviraj Chauhan
• 1193: the first known merchant guild is established.
• 1194: Emperor Henry VI conquers Kingdom of Sicily.
• 1195: On June 16, the struggle of Shamqori. Georgian forces annihilate the army of Abu Baqar.
• 1198: The brethren of the Crusader hospital in Acre are raised to a military order of knights, the Teutonic Knights, formally known as the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Teutons in Jerusalem.
• 1199: Pope Innocent III writes to Kaloyan, inviting him to unite the Bulgarian Church with the Roman Catholic Church.
• 1200: Construction begins on the Grand Village of the Natchez near Natchez, Mississippi. This ceremonial center for the Natchez people is occupied and built upon until the early 17th century.[4]

• China is under the Northern Song dynasty. Early in the century, Zhang Zeduan paints Along the River During the Qingming Festival. It will later end up in the Palace Museum, Beijing.
• In southeast Asia, there is conflict between the Khmer Empire and the Champa. Angkor Wat is built under the Hindu king Suryavarman II. By the end of the century the Buddhist Jayavarman VII becomes the ruler.
• Japan is in its Heian period. The Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga is made and attributed to Toba Sōjō. It ends up at the Kōzan-ji, Kyoto.
• In Oceania, the Tuʻi Tonga Empire expands to a much greater area.
• Europe undergoes the Renaissance of the 12th century. The blast furnace for the smelting of cast iron is imported from China, appearing around Lapphyttan, Sweden, as early as 1150.
• Alexander Neckam is the first European to document the mariner's compass, first documented by Shen Kuo during the previous century.
• Christian humanism becomes a self-conscious philosophical tendency in Europe. Christianity is also introduced to Estonia, Finland, and Karelia.
• The first medieval universities are founded. Pierre Abelard teaches.
• Middle English begins to develop, and literacy begins to spread outside the Church throughout Europe.[5] In addition, churchmen are increasingly willing to take on secular roles. By the end of the century, at least a third of England's bishops also act as royal judges in secular matters.[6]
• The Ars antiqua period in the history of the medieval music of Western Europe begins.
• The earliest recorded miracle play is performed in Dunstable, England.
• Gothic architecture and trouvère music begin in France.
• During the middle of the century, the Cappella Palatina is built in Palermo, Sicily, and the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript illustrates the Synopsis of Histories by John Skylitzes.
• Fire and plague insurance first become available in Iceland, and the first documented outbreaks of influenza there happens.
• The medieval state of Serbia is formed by Stefan Nemanja and then continued by the Nemanjić dynasty.
• By the end of the century, both the Capetian Dynasty and the House of Anjou are relying primarily on mercenaries in their militaries. Paid soldiers are available year-round, unlike knights who expected certain periods off to maintain their manor lifestyles.[7]
• In India, Hoysala architecture reaches its peak.
• In the Middle East, the icon of Theotokos of Vladimir is painted probably in Constantinople. Everything but the faces will later be retouched, and the icon will go to the Tretyakov Gallery of Moscow.
• The Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli composes his epic poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin.
• Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi founds his "school of illumination".
• In North Africa, the kasbah of Marrakesh is built, including the city gate Bab Agnaou and the Koutoubia mosque.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, Kente cloth is first woven.
• In France, the first piedfort coins were minted.
• The city of Tula burns down, marking the end of the Toltec Empire

See also: Timeline of historic inventions § 12th century

• 1104: The Venice Arsenal of Venice, Italy, is founded. It employed some 16,000 people for the mass production of sailing ships in large assembly lines, hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution.
• 1106: Finished building of Gelati.
• 1107: The Chinese engineer Wu Deren combines the mechanical compass vehicle of the south-pointing chariot with the distance-measuring odometer device.
• 1111: The Chinese Donglin Academy is founded.
• 1165: The Liuhe Pagoda of Hangzhou, China, is built.
• 1170: The Roman Catholic notion of Purgatory is defined.[8]
• 1185: First record of windmills.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 12th century.

1. ^ Soekmono, R, Drs., Pengantar Sejarah Kebudayaan Indonesia 2, 2nd ed. Penerbit Kanisius, Yogyakarta, 1973, 5th reprint edition in 1988 p.57
2. ^ Enn Tarvel (2007). Sigtuna hukkumine. Archived 2017-10-11 at the Wayback Machine Haridus, 2007 (7-8), p 38–41
3. ^ Notice sur les Arabes hilaliens. Ismaël Hamet. p. 248.
4. ^ Francine Weiss and Mark R. Barnes (May 3, 1989). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: Grand Village of the Natchez Site / Fatherland Plantation Site (22-Ad-501)" (pdf). National Park Service. and Accompanying 3 photos, from 1989. (680 KB)
5. ^ Warren 1961, p. 129.
6. ^ Warren 1961, p. 159.
7. ^ Warren 1961, p. 60-61.
8. ^ Le Goff, Jacques (1986). The Birth of Purgatory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226470822.

• Warren, Wilfred Lewis (1961). King John. University of California Press. p. 362. ISBN 9780520036437.